Saturday, January 9, 2016

Cab Thoughts 1/9/16

The rich tend to get richer not just because of higher returns to capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued, but because they have superior access to the political system and can use their connections to promote their interests.--Francis Fukuyama


Only 12 Martian meteors are known to exist on earth and are collectively called Shergotty-Nakhla-Chassingy or SNC ("snick") meteorites. The most famous one is called Allan Hills (ALH) 84001 and is believed to have blasted off Mars 16 million years ago, hitting Earth 13,000 years ago in Antarctica. It is so remarkable because it appears to hold microscopic fossils of Martian bacteria, sparking intense debate about whether ancient life ever existed on Mars.

Who is....Yukio Mishima?

Geoffrey Smith, a scholar of early Christianity at the University of Texas, noticed an eBay listing for an ancient Greek papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John - with an opening bid of $99!--last January.  Mr. Smith intercepted it and will present his research at the annual conference of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta. The credit-card-size papyrus, which Dr. Smith dates from around A.D. 250 to A.D. 350, contains about six lines of the Gospel of John on one side and an unidentified Christian text on the other. If Dr. Smith's analysis is correct, it is the only known Greek New Testament papyrus from an unused scroll rather than a codex, the emerging book technology that early Christians, in sharp contrast to their Jewish and pagan contemporaries, preferred for their texts.

There is a minor story that will get little coverage in the Iowa race. Iowa benefits from the ethanol -additive-to-gas scam. The farmers sell corn for ethanol--and not food--in an overwhelmingly illogical and corrupt politicized federal mandate requiring gasoline to be blended with 10% ethanol. Cruz is leading the Republican polls in Iowa despite his opposition to the law which he considers to be a form of corporate welfare. It would have been easy--and politically advantageous --for him to stay silent. It reminds me of Goldwater who campaigned against social security in Florida and in favor of closing military bases in Norfolk.

In 1970, the great Japanese author Yukio Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide, also known as hara-kiri). Mishima was a three-time Nobel nominee, and his dozen novels made him the most famous and translated Japanese writer of his generation. His spectacularly staged death was front-page news around the world, and it is still being analyzed for what it says about him, or his fiction, or Japan.

More than a dozen races across Western Pennsylvania appear to have been decided this year by fewer than 10 votes, including several by a single vote's difference, according to unofficial tallies.

Maritime abbreviations:
HMS: Her Majesty's Ship (or His Majesty's Ship, or Submarine), the prefix of Royal Navy ship names since 1789; the navies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada are also called Her Majesty's ship, but also have the country name with it.
RMS: Royal Mail Ship or Steamer or Submarine, prefix for ships under contract to the UK Royal Mail. The Titanic was a RMS.

Here is a message sent from  Politico's Chief White House correspondent Mike Allen to Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines requesting an interview with Chelsea Clinton:  "But This would be a way to send a message during inaugural week: No one besides me would ask her a question, and you and I would agree on them precisely in advance. This would be a relaxed conversation, and our innovative format (like a speedy Playbook Breakfast) always gets heavy social-media pickup. The interview would be "no-surprises": I would work with you on topics, and would start with anything she wants to cover or make news on. Quicker than a network hit, and reaching an audience you care about with no risk."
Free press.

An interesting paper written by Lawrence White on what economic thinking can be applied to the notion of redistribution of income. His conclusion is that it is limited. 
"The economic way of thinking does speak clearly, however, about the negative consequences of egalitarian income taxes on the generation of income, and the negative consequences of wealth taxes on the production of wealth through effort and saving. The size of income and wealth losses is an empirical question. The empirical evidence suggests large losses. That a price in reduced overall prosperity must be paid for egalitarian policies is not a decisive objection for those who place high value on egalitarian efforts, of course. But the price must be understood in order for citizens or policy-makers to make an informed decision."

Uxorious: adj: 1. doting upon, foolishly fond of, or affectionately submissive toward one's wife. ety: Uxorious is from the Latin word ūxor meaning "wife."

An article in the WSJ examines the disaffection with the world with capitalism. One point is this:  A new survey suggests that restoring confidence in free enterprise will mean ensuring that the same rules apply to everyone. What an insight.

As reported in The Hill: Dave Walker, who headed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said when you add up all of the nation's unfunded liabilities, the national debt is more than three times the number generally advertised. "If you end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion rather than $18 trillion, and it's growing automatically absent reforms," Walker told host John Catsimatidis on "The Cats Roundtable" on New York's AM-970 in an interview airing Sunday. He said Americans have "lost touch with reality" when it comes to spending.

Judicial Watch released more than 35 pages of emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin revealing that Abedin advised Clinton aide and frequent companion Monica Hanley that it was "very important" to go over phone calls with Clinton because the former Secretary of State was "often confused."  The emails, from Abedin's "Huma@clintonemail.com" address, also reveal repeated security breaches, with the Secretary's schedule and movements being sent and received through Abedin's non-governmental and unsecured Clinton server account.

Golden oldie:

This quote from an article, "The Confessions if an ISIS Spy:" In September of last year, at the apogee of ISIS's foreign recruitment surge, he says the influx of foreigners amazed even those welcoming them in. "We had like 3,000 foreign fighters who arrived every day to join ISIS. I mean, every day. And now we don't have even like 50 or 60." A positive change, certainly, but still a lot of recruits to a death cult.

A new study by Pew Research shows that American Millennials favor limiting speech when minorities are involved:
"We asked whether people believe that citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or whether the government should be able to prevent people from saying these things. Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups." There's also a difference in education levels and support for limiting speech. Those with a high school degree or less are 9-percentage-points more likely to support censorship.

In a similar vein, students and faculty at Smith College apparently didn't want a repeat of that ugly episode at Mizzou, so when they held a sit-in Wednesday to protest racial discrimination, their solution was to not let in members of the media in the first place - unless said media members pledged allegiance to the cause.

Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. In such a case the light of a distant source is pulled toward a mass closer to the observer and concentrated. http://earthsky.org/space/the-cheshire-cat-group-of-galaxies

Some Westerners are buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various "western alliance" governments. Why is it that these middleman have been allowed to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?
Who the on and offshore "commodity trading" middleman are and who cart away ISIS oil to European and other international markets in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars should be identifiable. Apparently one name keeps popping up as the primary culprit of regional demand for the Islamic State's "terrorist oil" - that of Turkish president Recep Erdogan's son: Bilal Erdogan.

AAAAAaaaaannnnndddddd.......a chart of SoGen's possible economic "black swans:"



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